


Good Girl

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Some Humor, Travel, Trick or Treat: Treat, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-17 17:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21057974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Sarah's parents had always told her that being a werewolf meant that she needed to be ready for anything. She just didn't assume that anything would encompass the world ending while she was still in high school.





	Good Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HostisHumaniGeneris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/gifts).

Sarah sat on the pavement dumbfounded, ears back, tail curled tightly against her haunches. Aliyah stopped next to her. Not understanding why they were there she didn’t know what the problem was, though she was a smart enough kid that she was bound to figure it out. For the time she busied herself with checking the collar and leash that Sarah was using to pull their shopping cart of supplies, and then checking each of Sarah’s paws to make sure that they were alright.

Never mind that cut paws healed fast enough, usually within a day, one of the advantages that came with being a shapeshifter – there were certain standards that your body wanted to conform to. At the moment Sarah was hard pressed to think of many other advantages because if she’d just been a normal high schooler none of this would have happened. She’d be at the lodge with her pack, except there wouldn’t be a pack, or a lodge, if she was normal would there?

So maybe that was another advantage.

Still, it seemed small in the face of one simple, impossible fact.

The bridge was gone.

Her plan had hinged on the bridge being there because bridges weren’t supposed to up and leave. Her parents had drilled it into her head that her contingency plans always needed to have contingency plans because being a werewolf was a lot like being a boy scout apparently, you needed to be prepared, but she was pretty sure that they’d never expected something like this.

In fact she knew they hadn’t. The last she’d heard from them was during a quick phone call with her mom and everything had been good then. They’d made it out of Manhattan and were only a few hours drive away from the pack’s lodge in the Catskills. The only concern was that the car they’d rented was low on gas and making a funny sound since they’d had to drive onto the median to avoid some broken down cars. Still, they were werewolves so having to abandon the car and run the rest of the way wouldn’t be the end of the world. Being a werewolf meant that abandoning everything to start fresh was kind of a cultural thing. Leaving behind a rented car and some supplies wasn’t the kind of thing that was even worth a second thought.

Of course that kind of thing was something that her family hadn’t had to worry about for generations now, but they’d still been ready. That was why mom had bought all that land in the Catskills and got a nice lodge built there when she got the chance, rather than putting the money aside for Sarah’s college education, which was looking less and less likely to be a thing with every passing day, so mom had won that argument.

Not going to college wasn’t the end of the world either.

The actual end of the world was doing a fine job of being the end of the world on its own.

Or at least it felt like the end of the world with all the riots, looting, fires, floods and who knew what else. She hadn’t realized how much of the city was below sea level until the power went off for the final time.

Sarah had no clue who or what had started it all, she hadn’t been following the news at the time, but there’d been an explosion somewhere and then everything went insane.

Of course she’d been at school at the time and everyone, literally _everyone_, had panicked, including the teachers. The building went into lockdown, rumors started flying as fast as everyone could check their phones. Fights broke out because everyone seemed to be looking for answers that gave them someone to blame for the attacks or strikes happening at all the major shipping ports, the drone attacks that had shut down most airports large enough to fly anything bigger than a Cessna out of, and possibly unrelated cyber-attacks on the stock market.

And all that was just at her school.

Never in her life had she expected to see Mr. Labrosse, the music teacher and a fat old man who resembled nothing more than a redheaded Santa Claus, sucker punch the dean of students. Ms. Goldstein had gone down like a sack of potatoes.

That was when Sarah called her parents and decided to get the heck out of there.

Her dad was the one who answered his phone of course, this was the thing that he’d been waiting for his whole life, the fruition of his ‘end of the world LARPing’ as mom liked to put it. Except this wasn’t like the stuff they discussed when she was little and her parents first explained what it meant to be a werewolf and why she had to be careful.

This was real and it wasn’t cool.

Dad’s advice had been good though and she did manage to slip out of the auditorium without being noticed, not that it was that hard when the teachers were all trying to break up the brawl that had broken out, or actively participating in it.

Of course the halls weren’t safe, plenty of teachers patrolling them as other students tried to get away.

In a moment of panic, something very dangerous for a werewolf, something that mom had drilled into her head countless times, she ducked into the bathroom to calm down.

Fight or flight was a very human drive and doubly so for werewolves with their instincts so much closer to the surface. They were reactive by nature, which was what caused so much trouble. Like actual wolves, if they were left alone they were happy and there were no problems, but they were rarely left alone and though no one actively hunted them in this day and age, there were still plenty of times when those instincts could be trouble.

Which was why her intent had been to take a few deep breaths, wait for the desire to drop to all fours, tear her way out of her clothing, which was dangerously constraining and hot in the way that usually only happened near full moons, to pass.

That had been the plan, except a noise in the stall next to her scared her so badly that the next thing she knew she was snarling and clawing at the stall door.

It took her way too long to remember that she did have thumbs and could still use them, though why she hadn’t just dropped to her belly and crawled out was beyond her.

Panic was a funny thing and it probably wasn’t helped by the way whoever was in the stall next to her was now screaming at the top of their lungs.

Prey drive was a thing that she knew about from the one pack reunion at the lodge where Uncle Mark took all the kids out on a run of the property to let them stretch their legs. No other people were around so it was safe for them to change even though it was the middle of the day. It had pretty awesome until they spooked a deer. Uncle Mark had tried to rein things in, but it had been a free for all, a dozen tween to teen werewolves and three of their normal cousins egging them on.

Sarah had brushed her teeth a dozen times that day and had been a vegetarian for a full month afterwards, which was very impressive for a werewolf and enough to make her parents worry.

So prey drive was a real thing and it terrified her.

The situation was exactly what her parents had always warned her about, worse even, because she didn’t have a change of clothing so she was stuck as a fairly good sized, but not quite giant, wolf in the girl’s bathroom.

The screaming subsided to crying, which helped, though the little face then popping up to look at her over the top of the stall hadn’t.

It was pretty much every werewolf’s nightmare come to life, a twist on the classic dream about being naked in public, except you were also transformed and everyone was staring at you.

In this case everyone was just a little girl who looked like she was maybe ten, if that.

Until that moment she’d forgotten entirely about the kids in the lower grades and just how young they were.

Instincts were an awful thing.

She’d forced herself to wag her tail like she was happy, advice that her dad had given her, because it helped diffuse a situation that might otherwise have ended in snarling and bloodshed. Sure that was supposed to be for when she was dealing with her cousins and everyone started getting too wound up, or if she ever met another werewolf she didn’t know, but it seemed applicable to the situation.

The little girl had smiled, hopped down and opened the stall door.

“Hey pup, how’d you get in here?”

And that was how she’d met Aliyah, who over the next few days she learned was nine years old, hoped to someday own either a llama or a parrot, maybe both, loved watching My Little Pony to the point where she could recite whole episodes from memory, and didn’t seem to realize that dogs weren’t supposed to occasionally stand on their hind legs to get a better look at things, break into grocery stores and book stores, or be able to survive getting hit over the head with a baseball bat hard enough for the bat to break after getting cornered by thugs.

It had surprised her how fast supposedly normal people broke off into packs of their own.

A riot not too far from the school had slowed her progress because Aliyah followed her out of the building and she didn’t want to leave the kid.

She was helpless and Sarah at least knew how to take care of herself, even if she was stuck transformed because the number one rule of being a werewolf was that you never changed in front of people or did things to make them notice you if you got stuck out on a full moon. Aliyah had already seen her and seemed willing to accept that she was a very smart, very lost dog so there was no reason to take any more risks by having that smart helpful dog vanish to be replaced by an equally helpful person who had the same plans as the dog.

And carried the same cellphone because she’d at least remembered to pick that up when she left the bathroom.

When she and Aliyah had needed to hide in an alley way while an honest to goodness stampede of people had gone by, trashing everything they could, Sarah had taken advantage of the noise and Aliyah hiding inside a box while she stood guard, to get in touch with her parents and give them an update.

Mom had wanted to wait for her, but as things got worse, keeping her updated through regular texts after the initial call, it was clear that getting away was a now or never thing. It wasn’t dad’s fault he was a stockbroker, but people were looking for people to blame and his name had come up on some Facebook group and that had been too much.

Werewolves had a thing about angry mobs coming after them and both mom and dad agreed that what she was doing was safer than showing her human face, just in case, and that they were sure she’d get off the island just fine. Because no one was at the point of blaming monsters for everything just yet. Taking potshots at dogs pulling grocery carts full of stuff, yes, but chasing them down as werewolves, no.

She hadn’t mentioned Aliyah to them during any of those calls and didn’t plan on it, not until she thought of a good way to justify things. No one in her pack were the sort to turn away a lost little kid, but she’d still get scolded for what she’d done.

Because it was dangerous.

Even more dangerous than some of the misadventures she and Aliyah had ended up on while trying to get to safety.

At first she’d thought to bring the kid to a police station and let them get her back to her parents, but one look at the first one they came across forced Sarah to reconsider.

Yeah one of them being on fire didn’t mean that they all were, but it set kind of a bad precedent, and things only got worse from there.

They’d had to hunker down and hide for most of the first day, the next day was spent dodging increasingly panicked people as it became clear that things weren’t getting back to normal anytime soon.

The fires from the first day had also gotten increasingly out of hand and the only firetruck Sarah had seen was abandoned and ironically, smoldering.

That was when she knew beyond all doubt that things were serious and she needed to prepare and plan the way her dad had taught her.

So there was another day of looking for supplies in places that hadn’t been picked clean yet, a bookstore giving them an enormous supply of candy, some maps, and a crockery cooking cook book for Aunt Meredith as a peace offering.

Even if she was a Mormon rather than a werewolf, Aunt Meredith was still a very formidable woman who’d once broken up a fight between two of Sarah’s cousins using nothing but a wooden spoon despite them being transformed at the time. The was also the one who made frequent trips to the lodge to make sure that the pantries remained well stocked and everything was in proper working order. The pack didn’t have an alpha, not in the traditional sense, but if there was anyone who came close it was Aunt Meredith.

The story of how she’d ended up marrying into the pack was a story that was recounted every time they got together for anything. She was the one who had encouraged mom to get the property to build the lodge. Even if it wasn’t one of the rules of being a werewolf, that you didn’t mess with Aunt Meredith was a rule worth following.

The way Sarah saw it was that if Aliyah won over Aunt Meredith then everything else would take care of itself.

Which meant that all she had to worry about was getting to the lodge in the Catskills, something that had seemed easy enough at the time.

Because she hadn’t expected that someone would have gone and blown up the bridge.

Sure there were other bridges, but that would mean doubling back and given what they’d narrowly managed to avoid she wasn’t too keen on that.

Aliyah took another step closer to the edge before Sarah whined at her.

She turned around and looked at Sarah, “What now, do we swim?”

They could, doggie paddling jokes aside, but that would mean abandoning their cart of supplies which had taken way too much effort to get in the first place. Unless it was life or death you didn’t abandon that much food and water when you had such a long walk ahead.

Maybe once they got off the island they could find someone to get a ride from. Sarah had marked their route on one of the maps when Aliyah hadn’t been looking and had even written down the address of the lodge, but that was something to hope for when they made it across to the mainland, which Sarah had come to assume meant safety and sanity.

Now, looking at the ruined bridge, she wasn’t so sure.

Phone service had gotten really, really spotty the past two days and she was trying to save battery as best as she could.

Aliyah took a few steps closer to where the bridge ended than Sarah was comfortable with, “Do we turn back?”

Sarah growled, not sure if it was because she disagreed with the idea of turning back after making it this far or if it was just frustration.

“We need to turn back,” Aliyah said more firmly, apparently deciding that she had to be the smart one now, taking charge of things when following a dog had already gotten her this far.

All the way to a bridge that wasn’t there.

Sarah shook her head.

“We’d need boat or wings to get across,” Aliyah frowned as she looked up at a seagull, “Hey bird! Want to help?”

If the seagull had answered Sarah would have changed back on the spot, regardless of not having anything to wear.

It didn’t though, which spared her that indignity, though she wasn’t sure how bad it would be at this point. Walking around on all fours and pulling the shopping cart of supplies by a leash and collar around her neck was getting tiring when she could just as easily rear up and push it like a normal person.

But that would be pushing things too far, bad jokes aside.

There was also the problem that having fur for so long made her worry about bugs and made her feel dirty. She liked daily showers thank you very much. And seeing colors right and not hearing and smelling every little thing, even things she didn’t want to.

Especially things she didn’t want to.

A boat though, Aliyah had an idea there.

They could float the cart across, probably.

They had a whole box of the big black garbage bags to keep things dry if it rained and to carry stuff. If they filled those with air and tied them to the cart they could probably float across on it and not even get wet.

Sarah hated the smell of wet fur, especially her own so not swimming was a plus.

She just needed to figure out how to get the idea across without stretching Aliyah’s belief that she was just a dog too far.

Previously she’d managed to get a lot done while Aliyah was asleep, not changing back, but just doing things that a dog couldn’t, though nothing as crazy as turning their shopping cart into raft to float to the mainland.

If they did that they’d need oars too, unless she wanted to pull it or swim behind and push.

Could she even push the cart from behind in the water?

Would her legs move right to do that?

What about pulling it? Could she do that?

She sure as hell wasn’t going to do it with a collar around her neck, she’d hold the leash in her mouth and try not to worry about her teeth.

She growled, loud enough to get Aliyah’s attention this time.

“What’s wrong?” The little girl looked around nervously for whatever danger there might be.

Sarah managed to turn the end of the growl into a yawn.

“Are you tired?” She scratched Sarah behind the ears and Sarah wrinkled her nose.

The only other people who got away with that were dad and Aunt Meredith, dad because it was him and Aunt Meredith because she had a thing about petting people when they were transformed. How she hadn’t had a hand bitten off by one of her own kids was beyond Sarah.

Then she recalled the spoon and the sound of it hitting someone across the muzzle.

Her ears went flat at the thought.

“It’s alright,” Aliyah patted her on the head once more and finally stopped petting her like she was just some dog.

Sarah yawned again, sniffed the air to be sure that it was safe and then got up to look for some place for them to hide and rest. Maybe she’d go see if she could scrounge up more supplies, maybe she’d use some of her phone’s remaining battery to try and get in touch with her parents.

The past few times she’d tried there were no networks to be found, but maybe this time she’d get lucky. Mom and dad had to be okay, safe at the lodge with the rest of the pack, waiting for stragglers like her to arrive.

Everything would be fine once she met up with the pack. Mom and dad and everyone would know what to do.

“It really is alright,” Aliyah said again and Sarah could tell by her scent that the kid was trying to comfort herself, “We’ll get to the safe place on the map you found and everything’ll be good. They have to be good people, leaving a map like that for us to find. We can find another bridge if we have to. I think there’s one this way.”

Sarah wagged her tail and let Aliyah lead the way. Maybe they’d be lucky and the other bridges would all be fine. It would just be a little detour, nothing much given the distance they had left to travel.

They’d make it, she never doubted that.

In all her parent’s stories there was one thing that they’d made clear, werewolves were survivors. No matter how bad a situation got they got through it. Just because this was the worst thing that had happened to Sarah, even if it really was the end of the world, her ancestors had made it through similar times where the world ended.

Tail held high, she followed.

There’d be a bridge or there wouldn’t. She’d build a raft of garbage bags if she had to and Aliyah would figure things out or she wouldn’t.

Either way life would go on and her pack was waiting for her.

Difficult as it might have been to live through it, she was just carrying on the tradition of her pack, of all werewolves, surviving against all odds and knowing that, no matter how bad things may have seemed, there were always better days ahead.

Always.

**Author's Note:**

> The request of 'Monster trying to help a small child survive the apocalypse' was so adorable and really is a prompt in and of itself. I mean what else has to be said?


End file.
